


Family Like Stardust

by anythingunderthesun



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Genderqueer Character, Origin Story, Pre-Canon, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:56:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3618987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingunderthesun/pseuds/anythingunderthesun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's origin story. Because everything has a beginning, and an end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Like Stardust

The first thing Castiel registers is the overwhelming warmth. It caresses on all sides, soft brushes of heat seemingly loving the new being into awareness. The experience is so all-encompassing that Castiel feels held aloft by sensation alone, a physical embodiment of the gentle surroundings.

Other senses begin to filter in. A pulsating through Castiel’s core draws attention, soon joined by a high, clear twinkle, almost like shattering glass. Weaves of something in between connects the two, like the humming of power or the sweet slick of rain falling.

Flickers of light lick their way into Castiel’s consciousness next. Swirls of clear, bright blue and warm yellows and oranges and spiderwebs clawing at the edges. The picture before Castiel continues to sharpen, like the daze of sleep fading away to reveal the brilliance of a new day, until every wisp of stardust and flicker in the distance shines piercingly bright.

But Castiel doesn’t recognize the surroundings in quite the same way. Being just a fledgling, no such descriptions have yet to form in Castiel’s mind. Instead the new angel only senses the comfort and peace in the place and declares it good.

\- - 

Castiel made it a personal mission to find somewhere in the universe that exceeded the beauty and comfort of the beginning, of the love weaving through that moment. The angel tried everywhere. The first dimension was too restricting, the eleventh too complex. Inside black holes proved boring.

The innards of stars, however, especially supergiants, captured Castiel’s attention. All those chemical reactions! The angel was transfixed for almost eight million years, observing the incredible nuclear fusion taking place in the core of the celestial body. Hydrogen to hydrogen, helium to helium, carbon to carbon, until the demise iron brought when the atoms tried to further their lives. The shock wave cast out the onlooker with the rest of its components.

The stardust surrounding Castiel greeted the explorer much like family did. And they all had been ejected from the supernova in the same manner, right? They shared that moment. The gravity connecting Castiel and star remnants almost mimicked the embrace of fellow angels, but the stark juxtaposition of this death and an angel’s birth weighs too heavy for enjoyment. It’s destruction and conception and one leads to the end of the other and now Castiel is mourning.

The angel tries the Hourglass Nebula next, hoping the brilliant colors soon to be fashioned into stars could soothe the newfound melancholy. Balthazar finds Castiel amidst the clouds of gas, patiently watching one named Nekkar gather itself into being.

Castiel has been isolated for so long that Balthazar’s first attempts to communicate are fruitless; alone the angel has no need for language. Eventually Balthazar sparks a vague memory of a language center long since abandoned, and once that is up and running, they chat flawlessly. Castiel relays his adventures--the exciting ones at least--that led to their meeting.

“It’s just--all that beauty and work wasted! And because of a single molecule of iron. So I came here to find comfort in creation rather than destruction.”

“But Castiel, what are these stars made of?” Balthazar asked.

“Superheated gases found in the nebula drawn together by the force of gravity, why?”

“And where did those gasses come from?”

Castiel puzzled on that. “From other stars?”

“Exactly! So why, then, would you mourn the death of a star when now there is potential for hundreds of other stars to be formed? Here, follow me,” Balthazar beckoned. Castiel stretches out a tendril of grace to the senior angel and is led through the universe to the familiar grave of a supergiant, now only a neutron star. But something has changed.

“You see? Because of the supernova, now something new has been created. Planets, no less! And that one will carry life in about six million years. There is no grief in endings; how else is anything supposed to get started?” With that Balthazar vanished.

Castiel set out with a renewed vision this time. Everything changes, but that doesn’t make change a bad thing. The angel first roosted on the planet Gliese, watching the rise of mountains as tectonic plates shift beneath the folds of rock and then as rain wears them back down to meet the remainder of the planet. But alas, the mountains rise still, elsewhere. They never truly disappear.

And lifeforms even lingered in the waters of Gliese, soon to make the mountains their home. But Castiel left the beings to find their own way; the angel could check on them later.

\- -

The wanderer found Earth by chance. The lights clinging to its surface even in the dark captured Castiel’s attention; an anomaly to investigate. But they would go out when the angel erred too near, exploding and showering sparks everywhere. That isn’t helpful when one is trying to determine the source of the light.

One type of light--firelight, it’s called--doesn’t shy away from Castiel when the angel gets near. Its flickers enrapture the explorer. So many colors melded together and yet they flow so smoothly! The only thing Castiel can compare it to is a piece of a star, fallen to Earth to burn in isolation.

Balthazar came to Castiel while the angel sits by a self-made fire. This time he wears a vessel.

“Heaven has work for you,” he calmly states. Castiel stares. In all the millennium, why now? In peace, Castiel has wandered, not interfering, not creating chaos nor anything worthwhile, an observer.

“Exactly Cassie,” Balthazar answers some thread of the thought. “You have seen so much. And they need you to put that to good use.”

“Then I am at Heaven’s service,” Castiel vows.

\- -

Castiel didn’t quite expect to end up here, amidst the squalor and filth of the Pit. When Heaven called, the angel had not an inkling what would be required, but this still wasn’t it. Not that it matters. Now there is a job that must be done.

Demons linger in every dark crevice, lurk along each hall, their ugly faces in stark relief under the garish red lighting. Unfortunately, the dimness of the Pit did nothing to cloak the pure light with which Castiel perpetually shone, so no form of stealth followed the angel. In some respects, it was easier. Instead of being armed, the demons simply dropped at the purity of a bare angel’s grace.

But to force into the chamber holding the Righteous Man without some form of cloaking proved impossible. The impurity of the place charred at Castiel’s wings, grace, everything. It left the Angel weak and vulnerable in the midst of the Pit, an unpleasant scenario. Castiel backtracked to the carcass of a slain demon before forcing inside. It was the most vile experience--like wearing a slimy shirt four sizes too small and the shirt being on fire as well--but it got the angel into the proper chamber.

Castiel didn’t even have to check for the correct soul, the Righteous Man shone so brightly in the dank of the Pit. Like a star, like the source of a flame, like the stardust Castiel calls family. The demon is disposed of and Castiel envelops the brilliant soul, drawing it into the very core. Around the edges grime of the Pit lingers, but none of the corruption has nicked the surface of its vibrance. A gentle wash of Castiel’s grace smoothed away the taint of the pit, leaving only the Righteous Man in his full form. That doesn’t stop Castiel from lingering on it, brushing tendrils of grace across the soul left unloved for so long. The angel does what is possible to make whole the soul so chipped and broken, like the body he left behind. 

The longer Castiel clung to the soul, the more it seemed the soul was grabbing right back. At first, the angel was sure it was only wishful thinking, but as time ticked on, the Righteous Man’s grip had grown tighter and tighter until Castiel wasn’t sure who was holding onto whom, couldn’t tell who was whom. And then the angel knew he was ready to save the world again.


End file.
